Conclusion on «Rebecca», «My Cousin Rachel» and «The Scapegoat»

When they were published, this books dind’t interested critics so much. They actually just were labeled as women’s fiction, so they weren’t considered good at all. Reading this kind of books was a waste of time. But when they started to analyse them, they realized that they were more than that. The importance of social and psychologycal problems that this books carry is incredibly big. The conflicts are present during the whole novels, and it is almost impossible not to see it.

I decided to analyze this three books because I thought they were going to impress me, sincerely. When I read Rebecca for the first time it was a big surprise and I didn’t expected it to be so complex. I always start reading a book with no expectations, I mean, I don’t read anything about the book (critics, analysis, reviews…) before reading it, but I kind of had an idea of what it was going to be like. But, the reading turned out to be incredibly interesting, and it made me question a couple of issues that bothered me the whole time. That was the moment when I decided the topic for the papers. The unreliability of the narrator is a subject that has been exposed to the public for many, many years, but I never thought about the issue before. Then, when I read the other two books I was a bit influenced by so. I was already thinking about the narrator, and I focused a lot on the subject. I knew that the pattern that the author used in Rebecca was also soing to show up on My Cousin Rachel and on The Scapegoat. And of course, I was right about that. The three narrators, are, in fact, unreliable due to their personality, their jelousy, their fears… and if the reader does not pay enough atention, this will go unperceived.

It also fascinated me quite a lot, how the author presents the subject without the reader noticing. We assume the truth of the story, just because the main character is telling us so. We adapt to the narrator’s lies, and we believe them, unconsciusly. It’s interesting that we don’t really question ourselves about the issue. We let the narrator (or the author, but that’s another topic that I’m not going to approach) guide us during the whole book. They tell us half the story, and that’s why, sometimes, when finishing a book, we feel a bit empty. We expected more from it, and this leads, in some cases, to dissatisfaction. But, if we read these books with the presupposition of the unreliability of the narrator, we don’t get upset at all. We actually understand the story better, and we comprehend the reasons why the narrator does what he or she does.

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